Steam Review Shakeup, Gamescom Galore & SILKSONG OMFG?!?!? | Games for Breakfast

[Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt.
Oh, good morning, Will.
Good morning to all of you.
Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but that also has one singular cap. Everyone's saying like no cap. There's no way we can pull that off. I I want to be very clear. So, we only have the one that I am currently wearing.
So, it's kind of like a reverse Clark Kent. You know how Clark Kent puts on the glasses and then no one's like, "Wow, you look suspicious like Superman, the well-known hero that saves everyone repeatedly that everyone knows." Except if Matt takes off the hat, no one will recognize him.
That's right. That's actually how he goes incognito places is when Matt doesn't want to be recognized, he just takes the hat off and then it's like a like like some kind of veil like just materializes around him and he becomes invisible. I myself am only able to

perceive Matt without the hat after years of careful study and practice. So, one cap. One cap.
Yeah, one singular cap. Good morning. I hope everyone is doing well. We have a we have a rather stacked show this fine mourn for all of you.
Yes, indeed. Uh for we have many many wonderful pieces of news uh to tell you about. Uh
and caffeine that I can now have.
I'm like halfway done with this can.
Well, how nice for you.
Listen, just cuz you decided to make your caffeine consumption a bit and I decided to distinctly opt out of that. I respect avoiding the hype train on Twitch because you have to scare it away and you have to make it not feel comfortable.
Yeah.
And what's more uncomfortable than no caffeine? I ask you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. See, see, you're not the only one. See, did that in college that wore a

baseball hat their entire freshman year and then had did you reintroduce yourself to a few people sophomore year after you stopped wearing hats? Exactly. Exactly. Um, okay. Uh, that guy Jimmy asked, "Was there a giant gaming convention or something?" Yes, there was.
Was this past weekend? In fact, we are in uh Betwix, a tale of two cons.
Um,
not the story of the greatest heist ever, though Twitch chat would very much enjoy that. No. Uh, we are in the in the the the odd interlude that exists between Gamescom and PAX West. Uh because there are
it's called Monday,
right? Yeah. It's literally Monday. I think it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, PAX starts Thursday. Like it's and and people who are exhibiting at PAX may have gone directly from Gamescom to PAX.
Like it is this is a wild two weeks. So um we've got some stuff we should attend to and then we'll we'll roll into stories. So first off, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you.

Our Kickstarter wrapped up Friday. Uh, we got to do a a nice early countdown stream during which there were no technical problems with Kickstarter whatsoever that were causing me and Matt no end of frustration and anx not a single one. Right, Matt? In no way did Kickstarter's uh back end mess up so hard that no matter how many people pledged and Kickstarted and gave generosity and got calendars that the number on the front page did not change for roughly the entirety of our closing uh of Kickstarter stream. That totally didn't happen.
Definitely not. And then we definitely didn't wake poor cat up with messages about how it was broken. And tried to Cat tried to give us a complete number on the back end when we ended uh doing all of the the the darkest of maths, but uh that was a very impressive number as well. However, the final number was even larger than that.

Apparently, you all like uh historical calendars.
That That's right. After uh 1,659 backers, we raised uh $78,976 towards our calendar. Uh, in addition, that does mean that since we cross $70,000, uh, the backers of that Kickstarter will be voting on a puzzle. Uh, one piece of art will be made into a physical puzzle, which I will be getting and doing here on stream. I have a top down cam. I can do that. Um, but when it comes in, I'll be doing it. Uh, but that will also be part of the secret Kickstarter store uh, for backers first uh, when we get all of the details ironed out because we've never made a puzzle before. I have my meeting with uh Jeff and Cat today. We're going to go over it all um from what we know about manufacturers. We'll probably make some final calls and get that thing moving.
Yep. Uh all right. Uh important scheduling note, there is no design club this Thursday and there is no games for breakfast next Monday due once again to

PAX West. Jeff and Matt will both be at PAX West. Um there will however be a design club next week. Uh, it will be episode two of uh let's play uh Pokemon Shining Pearl like a designer.
Did you guys get ahead?
Oh, you're talking about the following week. I thought you recorded one and you were holding it. No. Okay.
No, no, no. We we we we have we have no time to do that. Uh but speaking of packs,
that's right. Uh
uh so we'll be doing a uh panel on and I've already preloaded it and now I have to pack up my PlayStation 5 and bring it to Seattle. Uh we will be doing a design club on the first hour of Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta. Um which I believe will be playable for the early access folks I think today. What is today? No, tomorrow the 26th. Um so we're going to be breaking down with a panel of designers with Jeff, myself, a few other friends of the channel. I believe Jasmine will

be there um and basically go over the first hour of the remake and see what we believe the designer's intent is. Whether or not we play the intro with the song uh is still to be determined considering it takes about 5 minutes and the panel's only an hour.
Um so that will be uh on August 31st on the Sunday at 6:30 in the Blue Dragon Theater. However, uh friend of the channel, uh Jenna Stober, uh asked me to be on uh one of her panels, which is uh at 4 PM the same day on Sunday at the in the Firebird Theater entitled Tears of the Kingdom, but spelled like a tier list, where uh we will be going over and ranking various items, elements, locations, people, characters, etc. from Tears of the Kingdom and putting them into a definitive tier list. Um I'm very excited about this. Uh, I that it's funny that you I was saying before I can't do something cuz I have homework. Um, the homework is getting back into Tears of the Kingdom because I used to play it a lot and now I need to like

refresh myself. So, those will be the two panels, but we'll be around the entire week. Please say hi if you do see me. I will be wearing the hat.
Um, yeah. Uh, I I love going back to Prime in Seattle feels like going home. Like, it's a real good vibe. So, please say hello.
Yep. Um, we did have a quick Kickstarter based question. Uh, how many pieces will the puzzle be? Do we know yet?
No idea. No idea. Uh, pieces will be probably like that big. So, and then the puzzle be like that big. No, we're working on it. Uh, the the first uh full disclosure, the first not even like a test of our puzzle, but the like having the manufacturer send us examples of puzzles. The first one we got, the pieces were like this big and we're like, "No, what?" So, we're we're figuring it out.
Yeah. Um, yeah. And for anyone who's uh Yes. Anyway, you there's a bunch of bath that actually goes into this, there's a Matt Parker video on the math of making puzzles, fun fact. Um,

yeah.
So,
so anyway. Yeah.
Cool. Cool.
I was going to say I like this comment. The least political game. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's just got um child soldiers and uh PMC's and nuclear warfare and global overreach by United States senators and arms dealing and child kidnapping uh and transhumanism, cybernetics and brains and jars and uh snake snake snake the air for the least political. Yeah, agreed.
Yeah. Okay. Uh let's roll into our stories. First up, surprising literally no one who has been paying attention. Zero humans who have been paying attention were surprised. K-pop Demon Hunters did hit number one at the box office for the singalong. It's kind of insane though because it

had obviously a limited release of theaters. Um, uh, Netflix is really, uh, chintzy with its like, um, with its theatrical releases. Uh, this is the first time a Netflix film has actually gotten the number one spot at the box office. Granted, it's a bit of a middle point uh, in the in the release cycle of or actually, it's kind of, I guess, at the end of the summer release cycle, so going into spooky season, but the um, it's really lovely to see that this actually happened. Now, this Netflix isn't going to obviously change its like methodology. This is a very specific case. Uh, basically, it was almost sold out across 1,7 1,700 theaters and um the the ask for something like this is obviously different, right? Like they released it on streaming, everyone loved it. It got super hyped up. There were articles, podcasts, as you can see the graphic uh that dropped last week uh for for mine for the only podcast about movies. I I put my little self on a on the ramen

things there with my co-host Shahir. Um, but like the the cool thing I think about this is is it it proves the sort of if your if your property can support it essentially a second life for your thing. The reason why this is popular in this way is not only because it's great, but because it already has the fan base and now you're asking people to go interact with the film in a very narratively correct way that the film actually asks the infil fans to interact with that property. Like it all ties together so incredibly well,
right? And and the problem is that there will be attempts to do this that recognize none of the nuance. We will get a series of K-pop demon hunter likes and all of them, many of them will fail because they've learned all of the wrong lessons. We've seen this time and time again and in video games. We will see it here in new ways to do film. Uh they will miss like the whole like multi-layered narrative harmony thing uh

in favor of trying to make a quick bug.
Yeah. Also, I I was a little just on the back end of like movie house uh business and drama. So, this this uh this limited release was through Cineark, Regal, and Alamo Draft House mainly. Uh AMC on the other hand uh as expected stuck to its policy and did not do any bookings for anything that was available on a streaming platform. That is a long-standing AMC thing. Um I get it and I don't get it. I think this would be it's funny how there there's always like in things like this like the slippery slope argument but like you if you own your company you can just choose to do something and choose not to do something. You don't really like you can be like I want to do this because this is a different experience that people can't get at home with the same piece of media. Like there's a pretty easy thing there. So I was a little disappointed that AMC didn't do that but uh I know they are still trying to uh make movie theaters profitable. Um, and that is not going great. So, yeah, this is interesting. It's it's it's funny because it's a it's a

victory for a film in the cinema
that also can partially represent how the the slingshot that a media property needs to be to be a phenom, especially a new one, something like this, to get it to the point where it can sell at a limited release, like it kind of needs the sling like the the streaming slingshot first. again like the pedigree of who made this movie by the folks the Sony animation like the people behind Spiderverse and stuff is it is phenomenal. Yeah. Uh but this is a brand new property that they just were very smart with because they chose a topic that people are passionate about. They made characters that people really love. They like you know they did the work.
Um but you constantly see some other some other things that also do the work and that just don't hit in the same way. So uh I don't know. I was very happy to see this happen and uh I hope people learn better lessons from it and we don't just see the myriad of copycats that Will is saying that we will even though I believe that we will.
Yeah. Yep. Uh yeah, it'll be good.

Yeah.
You know, or it won't. I uh you know what I'm not looking forward to, Matt?
The sequel.
Um I think it could be good. like, okay, so uh I'm gonna butcher this, but like uh one of the the largest movie property on the planet right now is um I'm gonna say the Americanized version of the name, not um I I we had guests in the podcast to tell us how to say it correctly uh in in Chinese. Uh but like I I can't do it. Uh so it is uh Nija. Have you heard of Nija? Anybody? I
I have heard of it. I have not experienced it.
So the first one is pretty great. The second one is a is a legit phenom. I actually saw that in theaters. Um, and I had the worry that I think you have with K-pop demon hunters of like, oh, breakaway success story first time out. Wow. What if they do it again, that's going to not be great. Uh, Nisha 2 is is

legit one of the most gorgeous films I've ever seen. and I think at this point has made the most money a film has in its current like release window.
Sure. Um I I think
so on on one hand I'm worried about this one specifically narratively and on the other my other longstanding sort of feeling is some stories should just end right there there are stories that need to end with
and then they lived happily ever after. But I want like like it feels like Roomie's story like the the the bit about her coming to terms with who she actually is. That story has ended. I feel like um other characters in this movie have a bunch of stuff that still could be explored and that's what I kind of hope they
if we get a Bobby focus for the sequel. Top tier, right? Just like top tier. Like who is Bobby and why is he Okay.

Anyway, not not the point. Um
yeah. Yeah, I think it's fair. All right. Let's let's move on to uh our next story which is EVO is under new management. Um Sony has sold its uh controllingish stake in EVO to Nodwin Gaming. Uh Nodwin is a games and events company that's based in India. It's been around since 2015. has led facilitated events such as uh Dream Hack India, Comic-Con India, Valerant Challengers South Asia and various PUBG Mobile Championships uh in the region. Uh this comes to us from
So is this them breaking out to doing like things outside of outside of that region? Is that kind of the
That would make sense. Or that they are going to use their um they're going to use their controlling stake to either run a second EVO in that region or that they're going to move EVO there because
again

we had it has not been so long since the world learned the name of Arsen Ash, right? like that. Like there are there are players around the world who play fighting video games in different ways in different communities and it is unfortunate that many of those communities have been short changed due to travel restrictions or problems or whatever like getting
these getting competitors to EVO. So I I actually think it makes a lot of sense to have EVO in a different place or have another EVO in a different place that doesn't have as many problems getting people there for various inundry the world is on fire reasons.
Uh Damon uh asked a good question. Uh what is EVO? Uh that is the evolution championship series. It's a fighting game tournament that's uh is it the largest I feel like at this point I'm mistaken.
Yeah, for fighting games it is certainly the largest esports event I think. No, no, no, no, no. Cuz fighting games are a relatively small correct fish in the big

esports pond,
which is why they stack all of the fighting games together and then just billet weld them. Also, if they only did some of the fighting games, then Sonic Fox would have to fly all over the country so they could compete in all of them. So, they're being very nice to Sonic Fox and just putting all of them in one place so Sonic Fox can show up and win stuff. Um,
I uh I I was so curious when Sony bought it because then they did really give it a PlayStation focus. Like they really did push PlayStation games and and and things during it. Uh even to the point there was like some Astrobot tiein or something.
Yeah.
Uh but they um esports for companies like Sony are just not profitable enough. So, like when they do these things, I think they think they're going to get an avenue into something, but like I know fighting games are popular, but they're still not like I know and we kind of had a bit of a a

fighting games as with Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 11, Tekken 8, like and now we're getting uh obviously leagues fighting 2x KO um and then like a couple other games are coming through. There's there's there's lots of winners in the space, but like it's as far as like an esports type thing, it's it can't even scratch the surface of like League, right? Like it can't like and that's the kind of level I think you need if you're a giant company like Sony to really get a return on your investment. And it also seems like when companies come in and buy these tournaments for esports that are not League, right, that are like small to mid tier,
they think that like it's just going to exponentially grow on its own and then become that. And that's never happened even down to the biggest swing and um I guess not quite miss because it's not over but the Overwatch League.
Yeah. I I think also like I don't even think I would have to check more

specific at the numbers. I don't think EVO is as big as the International or the World Championships for Counterstrike. Um but that is also because Valve tends to those events are not to bring new players in. Those events are for people who play those games because Valve doesn't need to advertise because they're Valve. Um so those go a little less notice. they don't make they don't they generally don't bring containment on those communities. So, um I do agree though that it's not something you make a ton of money off of. Uh the the artic the RG article also did observe one important thing which may change um which is that when Sony got their controlling stake in EVO, Nintendo said you can't play Smash at EVO anymore. Was that did that line up or was that not like
It may not have been causal, but the timelines roughly align closely enough that it could have been, but Nintendo did not, I believe, give a direct reason

is my understanding, but I could be wrong on that and chat can correct me.
Um, either way, it is certainly possible that Sony's departure may cause Nintendo to reevaluate, though I I honestly doubt it. Nintendo doesn't like being part of esports. I think the closest they're okay with being esports is like Splatoon and Pokemon, but Pokemon is also like the Pokemon company doing Pokemon Company things. So like that's its own whole stick.
Yeah,
it's funny there. I feel like there's an episode in this somewhere where like talking about fighting games in general and why even when they break containment, they don't break containment.
Yeah. like there has to be something about the size of a player base that's willing to do which is which is strange because you know uh boxing and wrestling are like big things which is not exactly the same but I would I would argue that even like the WWE is more narrative focused

and the spectacle is what sort of keeps you sticking around the the narrative is what brings you in and like hooks you right.
Yeah. Um, and fighting games, even though there are wonderful story modes in many of these games, don't really do that. Even though the people like myself that are deep into something like Mortal Kombat like know way too much of the lore and probably uh should have dumped some of that info in their brain so they did better in other classes in school but didn't. So like I guess I don't know there's there's something interesting about and it could just be about like size of player base and who you can get into that especially in a onev one style game. Well, and uh fighting games, and we've talked about this a bit in other places, have a bit of a problem, which is that their barrier to entry is pretty high, relatively speaking. The the skill floor to seriously understanding compete in fighting games is relatively high compared to something like a first-person shooter.
Sure. because the combo it's a different kind of knowledge, right? Where skills

in general might not translate as well into any to a specific fighting game, right? And the the level of the competitive player base is very high and because fighting games are so thinky, um that translates into people with decades of experience who will just wipe the floor with you and tech in.
Yeah. But like I wonder then if the solution cuz like that's the any any institution at this point whether it's 30 years old or three is going to have people at the higher levels that will wipe the floor with you. Like maybe something like league or things that are more team based like 5v5 or or something like that. Maybe those are more forgiving because the v there's just more variables to it. Like you could just because you just because you're vers someone who's been playing a game for 15 years or whatever doesn't mean that you also might not be teamed up with someone
Yeah.
that's been playing the game that long. Whereas in a fighting game, it truly is just you.
Yeah.
And not everyone likes the idea of of

just the the mechanical monotony of of what a fighting game offers. I personally love it. I'm very much looking forward to um Marvel Token um as well which was heavily uh showcased at a various game show we'll talk about later today. But yeah, it's interesting because I feel like as okay, broad statement here. I would posit that fighting games have the most break containment characters.
Yes. poundfor-pound than almost any other genre. Now, League of course you have arcane, you have other things, etc. But like
as a genre,
if you say if you say to anyone who's been alive since probably the 80s or maybe even the 70s cuz it hit them at the right time, if you say Scorpion and Subzero, they know what they look like.
Do you know what I mean? Like, and

again, that that's not value in and of itself. we see movie uh you know movie franchises and other things trying to capitalize on that. But like that does say to me that there is something interesting with fighting game worlds like or like even like uh Ken and Rayu Chun Lee. I feel like these are all characters that broke containment.
Yep.
I think I feel like that's fair.
Interesting topic.
Yeah. Uh, next up, Steam has announced that they are shaking up the way that reviews are displayed and calculated. So, uh, let me I've got a Kotaku article in front of me. I'm going to try and make sure I get this correct the first time. The percentage score that you see when you pull up a a thing, right? You pull up Hollow Knight and it's like 96% positive, overwhelmingly positive after X number of views. Sure.
All of that data will now exclude for you as a viewer

reviews which have been written in other languages.
Real quick before we go too deep. So yes, this is a feature that you can turn on and off.
Yes, this is the the default I believe will be that the feature is on
but you can turn it off. Yes, that is very similar to the way that they've changed reviews in the past where they have said that you can choose they will algorithmically detect periods of extreme volatility in reviews such as when a developer makes a political statement that a portion of the user base or um does not like particularly with free-to-play games where the bar to leave a review that says you've played the game is very low. Um, and you can choose to exclude or not exclude those from the aggregate review score that is displayed to you. And it will tell you when it has excluded data, so you can go and look at the full data if you would like. Um, that's very similar. Uh, my

thought, however, is that because the default is on and we are, broadly speaking, not the average consumers of games on Steam. Uh,
what?
Yeah, we're just not. Uh I I have professionally browsed stream steam on occasion uh and like I have offered devs feedback on like what makes their Steam page good or not and like have looked at way too many games on Steam and have had to do wishlist purge streams and like
we're not the average consumers. So I believe that for many people while it is true that this feature could be disabled they will leave it on because they do not know that it is impacting their experience.
That would be my guess. Yeah. Also, uh I believe this is a no, but asking as a bilingual person, can you turn on multiple languages? Probably not. Uh I think it's based on your your base language that you select for your for your for Steam. Um which means you'd probably want to leave the whole thing on. But it's interesting, like at first

I was like, I don't like this. But then the more I thought about it, um there is there is an interesting element to getting this as an additional data point because now if I'm making a purchase I can sort of see like ah in my localization of this game or the language that I'm ch that I would want to play the game in. Let's just say it's the assumption. This is the review score. Whereas perhaps um I think something happened. What was the game that just came out? The Souls Born Souls like um God, what the heck was it called?
Oh, Wu Changang Fallen Feathers.
Oh, yeah. Wuang Fallen Feathers. Yes. where apparently it got reviewbombed really hard because some Chinese fans uh had it took issue with some of the historical references in the in the game. And here's the interesting part of that. I think

breaking it up by language is an interesting temporary fix. So long as again you could turn it on and off and see the difference, right? Because I would kind of want to see that. I'd want to know like, oh, people who this is game is based off of are having problems with it, then I could look into it based on whatever. But like from a mechanical or like just like the localized version that is in my my spoken region, if I just want that, I can also just have that. like it's not it's not going to hopefully if they enough that you can turn it on and off not really hurt a game. All this can do is sort of help in a way.
Y
unless I'm missing something. It's it's entirely possible I'm missing some different take of this because when I first found out about this I was like I don't like it. But then I was the more I thought about it I was like actually I mean it it can be helpful to get different vectors of different types of people reviewing the same game.

Yeah, it's um I think more granularity of data that is available to purchasers is good, right? You you can use this to get more information about the purchase that you are going to make and be an informed consumer as long as everyone knows what data is being shown to you, right? Because lying with people with statistics is one of the easiest things to do.
There are so many ways that you get lied to daily by statistics,
right? In so many
Well, that's because 56 56% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Correct. Exactly. Um, so, uh, I I just want I'm my my biggest concern is not the idea of doing this because I think it makes sense because we've seen a lot of, um, things, especially because the two biggest languages on Steam right

now are simplified Chinese and English.
Yeah.
And often times those two communities have extremely different opinions of games for a variety of reasons. Right. But there would be something interesting too, right? Like like okay, so let's say a game comes out. Um let's let's flip the script a little bit. Let's let's uh say an a Lincoln vampire hunter game comes out, right? And it portrays Lincoln in American history in a far less than uh good context. And Americans get really mad about it, right? And so they they review bomb it on Steam. Chinese, the people in China aren't as connected with the history. Uh, and let's let's say the game is like good and plays well, right? Like it's a it's a solid game, right? So, you'll kind of see the differential. But now, let's say the game is trash, like it's actually bad.
If you see both versions of who is saying what, etc., and they're both

saying it's bad. You kind of know it's like an intrinsic level, not a um not like a a not a single issue that could be uh based on a on on cultural preference. Does that sort of make sense? Again, I think I I feel like I'm missing something, but I at the end of the day, I'm happy that there are more tools. Does that make sense?
Yes. like
I'm uh sorry I'm I'm going through. So yes. Okay. So people were asking I have in front of me now the reviews for Night Rain. So first off we should also clarify this is live for some but not all games. It must have at least 2,000 reviews, publicly viewable Steam reviews for a game and 200 views for or 200 reviews for different languages, right? So, you have to have at least 200 reviews in two different languages for

it to enable this featur. So, Night Rain is a good test case because it's got reviews all over the place. I can break it down as far as so when I go to language I can see that it is all languages or my languages and I can customize which language my language is.
Uh customize uh no I can choose a primary and secondary language. I can choose additional game content languages as well and a that is a long list. Okay. Anyway um
that's way better than I thought.
Correct. And I can at a glance see that of the 136,726 reviews, 59,551 are in English. And that that based on those scores alone, it is ranked very positively. And I can also see that in simplified Chinese, there are 11,630 reviews. But among those reviews specifically, only those reviews, it is a mixed rating. So I can see what individual languages are doing, which I think is a very relevant like level of granularity. Um,

yeah.
Yeah. So
I think this is I think I think this does more help than harm.
I agree. I think it's a good step. Um, I would I think this is a shortorthhand for
I think this is a shortand vibesbased way of dealing with this.
Correct. I I I think that this is um I would say that this feels like a shorthand for review by country or review by region, which is what we really want, but this is a easy first step, right? Because it's much easier to show the language without being like, hey, here are all the reviews from mainland China and here's why people don't like it. Yeah, I would rather this because then this is a this is semantical but it's a more inviting way to check out other people's viewpoints because if it was like oh I want to see what they're saying in China that's like

it feels very ex at least for me uh external right like that is another thing but I want to see what people who are speaking in Chinese if I I love saying this about like educational things if I wanted to I could learn Chinese, right? Like, so like I could be if I wanted to be more part of that community and and how what you know what I mean? So like I like this because it feels more
there's also
yeah it feels better for some reason
as games get increasingly globalized as well. It is also relevant uh uh simply to say that the writing the quality of the writing and the translation may be different between languages, right? Like there are games which we have seen have had some god awful translation and regionalization. It's just bad,
right? Um and so
it might be accidentally written in a different language, but the the way that it's translated and regalized to your language is not good, right? And so that is another particular reason that the

languages matter, right, for review scores.
Um,
this is a fascinating story. I like this a lot. I not just the the tool, but like actually trying to pick and choose like, oh well this is good. Well, like this is bad. Someone in chat just said like is there a translate button uh or will Google translate get a bump, right? like like yeah like there's obviously ways too to like circumvent this if you really wanted to
but you also have to have then a like an like uh you know Italian and an English account.
Yeah.
Where you where you've set your primary language you have to change it. So like there's ways to circumvent it, but I I think it'll be too much of a pain in the butt.
Yeah. Uh cool. I think that's all we had on that. Let's do Yeah, I can do this in 11 minutes.
Do it in 11 minutes.
Let's talk about Mare. So, I'm going to lay a bunch of groundwork and then we're going to talk about a thing. Okay, are you ready? So, if you're not familiar with Final

Fantasy 14, I will give you a couple of fun factoids about it and then we will talk about a thing. Number one, plugins of any kind, add-ons, are strictly against the terms of service of Final Fantasy 14. That means that unlike World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars, we officially don't have DPS meters. We officially don't have any kind of external HUD customization. All of those things are against the terms of service of Final Fantasy 14. Fact number two, the overwhelming majority of the player base does not care about fact one. They don't because either it doesn't impact them, they're perfectly content with the game as it is vanilla, or they are uh engaging in a very complicated ballet with Square Enix of we're not going to tell you that we're using mods and you're not going to do anything about it because it's expensive to enforce that, right? It's expensive to continually

build new ways to stop people from loading client side mods that don't affect the client server relationship at all. Largely aesthetic mods. There are some uh mods in addition which are things like damage meters and those are done using um uh by reading the memory of the game fights in progress. Um so those two things having been true. The the third thing is we have seen in the past that breaking the don't talk about it, we won't do anything about it agreement. Um that is sort of tacitly in place between Square Enix and the modded community leads to Square Enix going why we don't now we have to do something about it because you said something about it and blah. Such incidents include when someone put up a billboard an actual physical billboard. I cannot stress this enough. This is a real story that really happened. Someone purchased

space on a billboard and put an invitation to their party in Final Fantasy 14 on the billboard, which is stupid in of itself because they used a bunch of Square Enix like trademark logo stuff that they weren't allowed to use. So like that was a whole thing and they put it on a billboard. And then second, they were using crimes multiple times, including using what we would call mods, right? We call them crimes sometimes. Um, they had also um gone into the game files and pulled out unreleased pieces of gear that weren't out yet. So, they had data mined the game and were displaying on the billboard unreleased items. And Square was like, "Bro,
how do people have enough money to make that bad of a decision? Like, what? What?
Matt, have you met gamers on the internet?"

Yeah.
Right. Okay, great. Awesome. Um, so all of that to be said, um, there is a complicated and long-standing relationship between 14 and mods. One of the last times we talked about this, there was a um there was a mod that had been released which was tracking individual users activity across the entire game without their knowledge or consent. That was kind of weird and creepy by reversing the blacklisting feature. Um that by the way that add-on has since been uh ceased and desisted into the sun by Square Enix as an example of their enforcement of this policy. So that brings us to Mar uh properly fully known as uh Mar Synchronos um is
explain what that mod is. I'm going to uh is a mod which has sort of been the

backbone of the modding community for Final Fantasy 14. So remember when I said that it was clientside mods, right? So, like if Matt and I were playing and Matt was playing his character, Dray Swift, and he thought that Daylor Swift didn't look enough like Taylor Swift, he could uh if he was in a mood to break terms of service, download a plugin or a series of plugins that would allow him to replace his gear with one of Taylor Swift's concert dresses. That is a thing that he could accomplish. Um, correct? Now, that would only be on Matt's computer, right? That would only be on Matt's computer if I were playing with Matt. Even if I were also running mods, I wouldn't be able to see it unless
stinks.
Unless I was using Mari synchronize. Mare uh lets you um synchronize synchronize
your mods
mods between users. You could exchange codes and then whenever Matt did a thing, right, changed which concert dress of Taylor Swift's his character was wearing,

I would see that on my computer. And this has gone on for years. This has been a mod for years. And it's sort of a backbone because mods are fun when it's just for you. But in a community that's largely about role playing and about um doing collaborative things with uh screenshots and machinima and stuff like that, um
it's very useful to be able to see each other's mods, hacks, right? Whatever. Um so this has served that purpose for many years. and uh they announced that they would be shutting down with 48 hours notice after receiving legal uh paperwork from an unknown source. We're assuming it's square. That's a reasonably safe assumption, but I do want to clarify that when we talk about this, that is an assumption that has not been confirmed. Okay? It would fit with the pattern of behavior from Square Enix in the past, but it has not been confirmed to the best of my knowledge at time of recording. So now let's pause

for a brief moment. I didn't know much about this story when making the graphics, but I did also hear that you can um also like without skins and things, other things could be like movements or dances or other things you could do that that would also transfer over across this mod.
Which is why
uh I took it as uh mods going away so you can't dance how you want to anymore. And that's why I put Foot Loose at the top of this thing with an X through it. Did I get the general vibe of
Okay.
Yeah. Um, so there there's a couple of things that are worth saying about this. One of them is that um it is a reminder to uh the mod community that they play around in Square Enix's backyard with Square Enix's permission and their permission looks like doing nothing. It's not affirmative permission, right? It's we haven't done anything about this. Don't give us a

reason to do anything about this. And the the other one is Um, some of you, and I don't think any of them are actually here, some people in that modded community need to take Will's patented class on. Shut up.
Well, yeah, because you're talking about like, you know, playing in Square's backyard. But the problem is when someone rents a billboard that directly overlooks that backyard with unreleased content and nonsense on it.
Correct. And in this case, what was happening was a whole bunch of players were over on Materia, a specific server, shouting in shout chat, aka zone chat, in every major city for every expansion in the game that there was a party that was using Mare, that they needed to use this code to come to the party.

I guess they hadn't really heard figured, you know, they didn't look into like speak easys or anything, did they? They would It's not like um you can't if you have a secret thing because of reasons.
Yeah.
You can't tell everyone as blatantly as that about the secret thing.
Now, we're not saying that that's specifically the reason, right? But that is part of it. Um so uh I do want to bring up think that if said that there was a snafu with GitHub accounts. That is part of it. There is a more complicated chain of events. Um some of which include having a uh the ability to directly contact with legal information the re the uh primary developer of Mario Synchronos. Um, yeah, because they put all of their real information on their GitHub and so they could be identified, right? Which that's a weird gray area as

well. Like you obviously want to be recognized for your work and supported for your work, but there was a Patreon involved. So now you're making money on a thing that Square Enix doesn't want to exist. And now we get into a Nintendo style problem where like if you're not making any money on it, it might be okay. But the second you make money on it, now we're going to let our lawyer sharks out. And lawyer sharks are very bloodthirsty, right? So there's there is this big complicated interchange. Suffice it to say for the people who were using this and not doing what I will call broadly harm to anyone, this super sucks.
Yeah.
I will also take this opportunity to warn people in the coming days and and I know a lot of people have already been giving this warning. Um, in the coming days there will be lots of people who attempt to say that they will be the one to replace Mare because it was a crucial part of this experience. Um, trust none of them. Trust zero people that they will be the next Mare, right? Because this is a prime opportunity for people

to inject malicious code into people's computers, to abscond with people's data, to try and make a quick buck for themselves and then vanish with it because there is a void in the space. People will quickly step in to try and fill it and many of them if not all of them will be bad actors. Not only that, just from a um uh supply and demand perspective, if if unknown entity uh a different shape other than a triangle, um goes after uh Mar for for this and then there's a bunch of loud people being like, "We're the next Mar." You you don't think that this company is going to also go after them right away? Like there's no way that any of these people even trying to fill the void right now will be able to. Again, this is one of those things like, okay, your distillery just got raided. Other people outside your distillery while while the cops are still in there

yelling, "My distillery is down the street."
It's probably not the best move to go to that distillery as well.
Yeah. um like it's gonna what sucks and this sucks for the community is I think if there is a replacement it's going to take time and it's going to be very grassroots and it's going to be very small in secret because that's the only way that these things can actually grow. It sounds like Mari was essentially grew to the point where it was an open secret and only after a few uh silly folks didn't take Will's patented class of shutting the hell up did uh corporate company come in and say like
why'd you do that? Okay, great. Cool.
I I do want to I do want to highlight Snacken's comment because I think this is really true. It is also very true that Mari is a peerto-peer file sharing arrangement,
which is absurdly unspeakably dangerous to your computer if you're letting it bypass all of the protections on your computer. So you need to know, you needed to know specifically with

whom you were trading files, right?
Again, like really dangerous here in territory specifically if someone's going to try and replace Mario quickly or poorly or um in bad faith. Right. So
what do we think of this? Uh cuz I'm not exactly sure.
I don't think so. I that that is not my understanding. It's certainly possible that the UK ID requirement came into this. That has been a big thing across a lot of places, but to the best of my knowledge that's not directly involved.
Yeah.
Okay. Um, it is however time for mods. I managed to cover I think most of that story. Well, we'll take questions on it when we get back. So, uh,
you mean time for ads?
Yeah, sure. That thing. I totally said ads on the internet. I didn't say mods. Check the tape.
No, not at all.
Check the tape. Uh,
don't check the tape because if they check the tape, well, they're going to know that you said mods and not ads.

You didn't take your class.
I'm tired and e and reading a lot of chat. You can go first.
Okay. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. Say, does Matt ever start a fake ad during one of these sections that you just don't like? Right. that you think like it's not that great or he definitely didn't think about it before he hit the button. Well, let me introduce to you a new mod peer-to-peer system from Games for Breakfast called Your Own Ads, but it's going to be called mods because Will that one time decided to say mods instead of ads and then that happened to be the vernacular that we ended up going with. But basically what it does is we can inject specific mods ads into your stream and then you don't have to watch the ones that you don't like. We're gonna work with Steam on some uh language coding as well in there. We'll see how it goes.

Ads for mods. Mods for ad. Oh, yeah. Maybe yours should just be mo ads specifically for mods. Or do you have one?
I already have one.
Okay. Well,
I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for you to do your thing.
He's ready. Hi there, Wolf from Extra Credits here. Here to remind you in my class when shutting the hell up is absolutely free. That's right, it's absolutely free. And it goes like this. If you're doing something that you know some people might not like you doing in a wide variety of places, your workplace, public, the internet, it's entirely free to shut up about it. There are plenty of things that people do that harm no one that just aren't spoken of for very good reasons. So take my patented class and shut up.
How did the class become patented?

Well, no one else was offering it, so I was the only one. So the patent was pretty easy.
Okay. Did it take like a couple month? Like I'm trying to patent a class and I need to I want to know if if my class uh how long the process takes.
Um it's instant actually.
Oh wow.
Yeah. Just just
Would you say it was actually super easy? Barely an inconvenience.
Yeah.
Nice.
Uh okay, cool. I think that that covers our um
I particularly like that set of fake ads because like I didn't really like mine and the but the thing that I was advertising was an ability to get out of it when one of mine is bad.
Uhhuh.
So in a way it might be the best one because it it's an ad that proves you need the thing that it's not selling.
That's very true. Um okay, so now we're back for ads. Uh la last thoughts on Mar. Um

that's Samar.
I got to keep us rolling or we're going to be here forever. Um
oh, I've I've officially moved my meetings by the way.
Okay, great. Excellent.
So, like they always are now at 1:30, not one. And therefore, not to say we have to go long.
I was going to say, do you still understand how much we have to go through?
What are you talking about? It's not like there was a giant games convention where a bunch of things were announced.
Right. Okay. Great. Um uh uh the the the ven diagram of say nothing and no snitching is a circle by the way. It's just a big old circle, singular circle. Um yeah. So I I think that this is this is a routine reminder that there is sort of like plenty of things that happen around games and in gaming that are in this gray area, right? Um and I think a lot of people who aren't Nintendo fans may be unfamiliar with this. Nintendo is a little more latigious than um than Square, right? But Square is not slow to

step up and defend the boundaries of what they have established, right? On on what their terms of service are.
It is incumbent on people to get in the practice of being circumspect with your communication, aka shut up, when doing these things, right? Because again, people choosing to make their gear look like Taylor Swift's uh, you know, concert dress, a thing which they someone made Taylor Swift's I don't even know if this is a thing. I would be shocked if it isn't to be honest.
I would I would never.
Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. But Taylor Swift has a lot of fire concert dresses and I know a lot of people who would love to beat up the the, you know, horrifying incarnation of death at the end of time and space in a Taylor Swift concert dress, right? That that makes sense, right? And it's not harming anyone. It's not impacting anyone else's gameplay experience. There's nothing bad about it, right? It is against the terms of service. People violate terms of service all the time. Your moral and ethical boundaries on where that falls

will be personal, right? But I think we can agree that it's not impacting anyone else. Um and and yet Square comes down on this. And they only come down on it when people don't shut up. Shut up. Very simple. Go play in your sandbox and shut up. Don't Don't mention it. Don't talk about it. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
Uh, keep it safe. Uh, was there one more little piece of information in the Final Fantasy 14 section which actually gets me fairly excited?
Yeah. So, Yoshi P did an interview
Yoshi P
uh our our our Yoshi P son uh our sensei did an interview with VGC at Gamescom. Um, and we'll have a link to the IGN article that talks about that interview in the notes. One of them, uh, one of the questions that was asked was, um, talking about bringing Final Fantasy 14 to a new platform, the Switch

2. Uh, and his answer was, for me, it's just my aim to provide Final Fantasy 14 and 16 to as many players as possible. And I hope that as many players as possible will be able to enjoy those two games. We are putting in our best efforts to ensure this happens. So, it's fine to convey to your readership that I consider the possibilities very positively and we are putting in our best efforts.
Now, what those efforts could be is toward looking at new places or that they've already started developing something, etc.
Correct. Now, I will say that Final Fantasy 14 does run on the Steam Deck. Runs pretty well on the Steam Deck. Actually, I've actually raided with someone who was raiding from a Steam Deck on Hotel Internet. The hotel internet was a bigger problem than the Steam Deck was.
Sure. Right. Um the uh the idea of putting it on the Switch 2 really appeals to me and and here's the reason why. WoW is a giant juggernaut of a game, right? Despite all of the growth

and uh player base that Final Fantasy 14 has and the skew that our community has towards Final Fantasy 14, because I refuse to shut up about it ever. Um, WoW still has a dominant market share, except WoW isn't on console, and I think it would be very cool if Final Fantasy 14 was available on the triumvert of consoles and was a thing that enabled people to play in a variety of different ways across all of these consoles for a long time to come. Now that the Switch is a the Switch 2 is a powerful enough console to play a big premium uh tab targeted MMO that has built-in controller support since day one. Kind of awesome. Big fan. Really excited to see where this goes.
I'm excited because uh while I did enjoy my time uh playing Trailer Swift in 14, I just know that I do not have the time to commit to an MMO like that I can sit down at a specific spot and play it. if it were on the Switch, what I on the

Switch 2, something that I could take and I just don't have a Steam Deck, so I can't do this. Um, there is a methodology there that says, "Oh, I could pick away at this on the go. I don't like, for instance, I could get through the story content where you don't need to be in a in a team the entire time and you can go through it, etc." And I know you can plug in a mouse and a keyboard to um to your consoles as well. But the Switch already like comes with the Switch 2 kind of comes with the mouse. So like I could also do it there. Like
um I don't know. I if this happens it would open up another door for me to try to like actually engage with the with the content because I'd be able to do it in a place that I could do anywhere and therefore I'm more likely to do it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Um someone was asking about the the does uh Switch have enough buttons? Yes.
Yeah. Short answer, yes, it does have uh enough central buttons to make it happen. Yes.
Anyway, it's neat.

Yeah. Uh it's really cool. All right. Uh next up, Bungie is having a leadership change after some 23 years. Pete Parsons is leaving Bungie. So, I have not kept up with Parsons and um who's the other gentleman who I think is also leaving had his name somewhere. Uh Truman
sounds right.
I believe they're the two the two sort of people who've been around for a long long long long long long long time.
Mhm.
Um it's an interesting time that this is happening because this is basically after Sony after buying them for a very expensive amount of money. um was super hands-off for years and now I think due to Marathon and Destiny underperforming etc they are going to become super hands-on and I'm curious if the two sort of uh founding folks here not founding

but uh long-term folks from Bungie leaving are sort of tied to that if this is sort of the because I believe uh um Parsons has been there 23 years has been there 15 I think that's about right I'm curious if they were sort of ousted or if they just decided that rather than take the oversight, they would leave,
you know.
Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's um probably a combination of them, right? Like after God, we're we're we're very familiar with this. Even on something that you love, there is a period in time where like it it ends in your life, right? So, like I'll give you I'll give you all a personal example, right? Like I deeply loved painting war game models and playing war games. That was a huge part of my life for like a solid decade. And that part of my life is just kind of over now. Like I have a whole bunch of

War Games models out on a table with paint and everything I need. And I just never want to.
No. That's It's funny. I'm the opposite. I have all of that stuff tucked away. And if I had it open, I would just do every 15 minute interview.
I pass by it every time I leave my room to go to the kitchen, to get a snack, to, you know, go do laundry, to leave my place, whatever. It's just on a table. It's out. It's there. I never feel like doing it, right? And so, in the same way, like, it can also just be possible that a confluence of things says, "I'm good. I'm going to take my golden parachute and I'm going to go find something else to do because the new creative endeavor is what I'm really chasing." That is also a possibility. I just want to inject that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, totally. And and sorry, someone said, uh uh where did it go? Was it R2? Uh was like, wait, wasn't this covered last week? It was covered a few weeks ago, but not the two leads leaving.
Yes.
Um
PlayStation cracking down on Bungie was and then the old story
and then after that the leads left,
the next step. Um, also it is uh safe to say, and I haven't followed on this, so

I don't want to harp at it too much, but I think back in 2024, Parsons did take some flak after a bunch of layoffs when at a very poorly timed time to uh uh list his basically his sports car collection.
Correct.
Um, so not exactly what I would call a a great move. Um,
so there is that. I know apparently uh Parson's more than Truman I feel like is a divisive figure unless I'm missing that. I I just haven't stayed up to date on Bungie's leadership that much.
Yeah.
Um
I Yeah,
I go back to I really want Destiny to like let's look at two companies. Let's look at the story of Bungie and the story of Blizzard. through various Activision acquisitions and other things, they have both changed

intrinsically from the days when uh Warcraft uh 2 and Starcraft from one side and uh Destiny from Halo, you know, you know, things like that. Like they're not the same studios when they made it. They can't be. people grow and change and get bought by larger companies and then escape somehow sometimes and others don't and whatever. Um I am still in in in the PR journey in my own heart. I have given up on Blizzard. Blizzard is gone. It is not the same. And while I will play a game or two of them, it is not a day one purchase by any means of the imagination anymore. I do not trust them. I do not think that quality is of the utmost importance. Um, and it's funny, the only game that I play from Blizzard at this point is Hearthstone, and that's because it's a uh TCG that I've been locked into for 13 years or whatever it's been,
which is Turbo Weird, by the way, because the new WoW expansion, even

coming from a Final Fantasy 14 player, looks dope.
Like, they're they're doing a bunch of stuff, right?
We'll get to it. We'll get to it.
Um, and I love WoW. I played WoW for seven years. But I I truly think that the Bungie that I loved is dead. there is something else there and maybe they'll make a good game like maybe they do from time to time or whatever but there's no I am not loyal to that company really at all which and we should always not be really loyal to companies but the reason why we are I feel like is you in some smaller earlier cases you're able to see like people in it and like working at it and it feels more like a group of people than a conglomeration or a corporation whereas Bungie I don't know if it's like the like can't find a home or like things just aren't working out. Like I don't know why I don't have the level of vitriol for Bungie that I do Blizzard. Um like I'm still rooting for Bungie.

I don't know why that doesn't feel entirely logical. Maybe the story of the company is just more of like they were at the top then they got knocked down then they keep thinking they have foothold places and they keep crumbling and I just want it to do well because I like the properties is I don't know.
I think Bungie is occupies a different place in nerd culture because of Halo. I think that the place that Bungie occupied in the mythos of nerd culture, particularly the nerd culture that like deeply influenced our um like early console days is very strong in a way that Blizzard's wasn't because it was primarily PC and while WoW was a big thing, right, it that was sort of its own um
large, no question large, still a niche, right? Um, I I think the I think the the Bungie story has been

sort of an attempt to return to that like funions and Mountain Dew Master Chief Lasso runs at like 2 in the morning, right?
I wonder there's there's that in combination with some things that people are saying in chat that I'm kind of popping up here. The problems with Blizzard started like the problems feel incredibly corporate, like they're corporate problems. Even the problems with Destiny feel like they were injected corporate problems.
I think I agree with that.
Um, and maybe maybe they've been hit so hard that they're not going to be able to come back. I mean, like I'd be I'd be really interested to see like Destiny 2 going freeto play.
That was under Activision if I remember correctly.
I think that sounds correct to me.
Um, while it did let for instance Will, you and me kind of dive back in and sort of

check it out, I don't think it actually did it any real favors. The thing I loved about Destiny 1 and to a point Destiny 2 before it was freetoplay was that it was a game you bought that had enough content in it that felt like actual like enough content in it for the price point and it had an endgame that they were updating from time to time. And then as expansions came out that like I feel like in the quasi it's not an MMO but in the shared space looter shooter genre freeto play for me doesn't work like I want to buy chunks of content
except Warframe. Warframe is however an unfair penny to put on these tracks. It is in all ways an anomaly. Right.
Here's the other thing. No, but let me

Here's what it is. So, you're right about Warframe. And I was like, "Oh, yeah. Why didn't I think of that instantly? It's because, and this is dumb. This is just how I compartmentalize sort of these things. It's because Warframe is third person."
I think that's fair. For whatever reason, I don't know if this is just intrinsically baked into me and maybe the next generations of people playing games, this is not quite the same hangup, but like a firsterson shooter as a freetoplay game.
Yeah.
Feels weird to me. Not bad. Look, it could be great. I And I know tons of people.
It's generally combined with a different uh word, right? So like uh free to play battle royale, right? like Apex Legends, right? Or sure freeto play, you know what?
But those aren't Yeah. Like Apex Legends is not a narrative driven. Like there's a bunch of combinations and I think it does come from what you came up with and what you are used to. And I think my bias is very much showing. Um I don't

know. I I know we're just sort of like going in circles about this. I do still want Bungie to do well. I hope that these uh gentlemen leaving and Sony taking control for whatever reason, this is not blaming any one party for anything. I hope that whatever this shakeup is uh knocks some dust off and lets them get back to making really cool games. And uh I've I've run into actually at Last Packs West I ran into two awesome people who were fans of the channel and I and I I was like, "Oh, what do what do you all do?" and they were sound designers at Bungie and they spoke so lovingly about working there like and and what it meant and like how it was their dream to work there on X Y and Z because of this that and the other and like
that I had this feeling about Bungie before that interaction but I think that actual interaction sold me a little bit more and again it's such a microcosm and a little bit of like biased nonsense but

uh I don't know I It it I want this company to do well and hopefully this shakeup actually does that.
Yep. Okay. Are we ready, Matt?
I think so. I've I've pontificated enough.
Take a deep breath. Time to talk about Gamescom. So, we're we're going to do a rally real quick. We're going to do our top uh notable games of Gamescom uh with with Matt having a a an honorable mention story first.
I do. So, okay, for Oh, oh, before we get into that, I'm so sorry, Will. You and I were talking about how I love that 90% of the show at this point, Will, is just you and me being like, "Man, we're tired." Um, but like, didn't we both kind of felt like this was a lot to ingest even over a weekend.
Yeah. I And it's partially where I'm at with the industry right now and partially where like other things that I'm doing in my life, right? But like I found it really

hard to care. Oh man, was it hard, right? Because Gamescom like I don't know. I also, it is no fault of his. I'm real tired of Jeff Keley announcement shows. I want something different. Not because there's anything wrong with Jeff Keley announcement shows, but because we always get a Jeff Keley announcement show. I would like something different, please.
You either you either fade away as the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Yeah. Right. Like it's not just just like again nothing wrong with the way that he does it. He's a he's a staple of the industry. I literally exclusively mean that I crave novelty in the way that games are announced and presented.
It's the we talked about a few weeks ago I think with a celebrity. It's when a celebrity is everywhere whether or not they're amazing or terrible you're going to get sick of them. It is a human nature. there's a backlash against the most delightful human being on the planet, Pedro Pascal, because he's in three movies at the same time in

theaters and he seems to be everywhere. So, people were getting like upsetty about it. And I'm like,
I I it happens with celebrities all the time. So, I totally get the vibe. I I agree. Let's let's spice up the the hosting genres for this thing. Yep.
Um yeah,
thousand%. Okay. um the Chris Pratt effect except Chris Pratt uh lately has said some things that go above and beyond just him being everywhere and perhaps uh
would you look at the time it's a hair past a freckle. All right,
Mushroom Kingdom. Let's leave. Um uh so uh my honorable mention though was one that I did not expect and then after thinking about it for a second uh I realized sort of why. Um, Black Ops 7, as Will coined it, man, do they know how to cut together a trailer. Bless you. Um, essentially,

I was shocked how interested I was in Black Ops 7. I don't play any of these games, but the second I saw it take the weird narrative twist of of like basic essentially fear toxin. They they mixed they mixed Arkham Asylum with Black Ops.
Sure.
And I was like, "Oh, this gives you narrative space to do something interesting.
I don't know if I'll get it or play it. I don't know." But like that and uh with the combination of I am a sucker for when it is done correctly and it is very rarely done correctly. When a trailer for a movie or a TV show or a game uses a classic song but re-edit edits it to the beat of combat. There's a master of puppets uh by Metallica track that shout out to the trailer editor for Black Ops 7 because
damn does that go hard. And again I don't like these games normally. This is not my cup of tea. So for me to be like,

"Are you looking at me? My cup of like like I I feel like it something something great was done in that trailer." So, while it is not one on my list, I just wanted to say that I I'm always a fan of when a piece of advertising or media that is not only outside of my interest bubble, but like adverse to it, I just don't like military shooters um starts to be like get me interested. I always like to call it out and try to dissect why that is because it is all marketing, but I'm very interested in marketing, right? So
yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. Medusa, even if you don't dig it, like the it does the the really kind of nonsensical thing that I think people try to do over and over and over again and can never do with like the sound of gunfire going to the beat of the song. But this was just an excellent like I would not be shocked if either the video

editor and the um the producer of that version of the track were not working closely together or they were the same person. Like it feels it feels so tight.
Yep.
Um anyway, sorry that that's my my honorable mention as as we start this.
All right. Uh first up we've got Resident Evil Reququum. Matt, tell tell us about this one. So, so I have been psyched about this since the initial uh thing. This was a good uh breakdown at Gamescom of like what the Here's what I like about previews of Resident Evil games at this point. They always lock you in a tiny little area of of stuff and it feels like that's going to be like kind of like what the whole game is like they did with Lady Deinescu Step on Step on Mommy Lady Lady.
Uh yeah. Um, that's what you thought was like the whole game of Resident Evil 8 when it turns out that's like a fourth of it.
Yeah, it's very small part.
And and so this section was our new uh heroine uh going through uh what is

essentially a hospital or a mental institution wing, I believe, with a another classic beast of of um of stalking that is going on in the space in a giant homunculous kind of thing with these weird flat teeth that eats people's heads. And um this had a real Alien Isolation vibe and I really appreciated the level of detail they did cuz okay so in previous Resident Evil games they have gone like in the in the first in the first person one seven and eight I believe they've gone back maybe it's just in seven or maybe it was just in eight and you could they like basically did a modu not a mod the company went back and made a third person version.
Yeah. Um here you have in nine they're designing the option for either and they're treating it differently. So there's a section and they break this down. Uh there's a really good clip of this in the uh IGN article I believe um about it which will be in the show

notes, but they they there's a part where like you see the big herunculus and you have to run away. In first person it's all soundbased, right? Like you're running down the hall and you hear your footsteps and the cling like behind you, but it's still a camera just going down a hall. It's not that crazy or different, right? They realize that in third person that sort of perspective shift is not as dramatic. So, they have your character as you're running trip and fall and look back and get up like it. It causes tension in different ways based on the different perspectives.
Yeah. And small moments like that spread around a large game like this is what I think actually makes these things last the test of time because they know the experience is different. The difference in type of gameplay that they're giving you. They are like they're planning for the contingencies of it to make both to have both perspectives still deliver the feeling to the player that they want and

one is not just tacked on. And I really appreciated that. Again, Capcom is kind of back and forth with this stuff, like you never know. But this gave me like that little section and that ability of changing and having it them both designwise matter and have a focus really was like, "Oh yeah, nine easy day one." Like, I won't even wait. Like, I'll just do it.
Uh, so I was very impressed with that. And that's that's one of the reasons why I do like Gamescom a lot. Uh, outside of like the Game Awards and all that stuff because like
you do get interviews with people with designers, you do get deeper dives. And this was a really nice thing cuz it's it's not going to be like a giant selling point as to the why they're doing it. They're just going to say like first or third person perspective and like that could mean a lot of different things. And they they really knocked it out the park I feel like with that.
Yeah.
With that.
Absolutely.
Uh
oh. And I'm so glad this is it Tyler. So yes, at least in this section of the game, but do you remember Nemesis in

three I think right? um when you got to the safe room, even though he chases you through all the other rooms, he just comically like stopped and waited for the door to close and then like you like there's no narrative reason why Nemesis isn't just punching through the safe room door. Apparently, there's a narrative reason in nine where the homunculus thing like it it's hurt by light. So the safe rooms have working lights, so you turn on fuses or something and so the the the creature starts coming in and then gets burned and goes back and like I was just like anytime you can do that and like to make a mechanic function and have it still work in the game is always lovely. So I appreciated seeing that as well.
Cool. Sorry that was a long thing, but I I was more impressed with Reququum than I than I really thought I would be.
Yeah, lots of mine are going to be shorter and a little more self-explanatory. Uh, At Fate's End is the next game by the same studio that

brought you Spirit Farer, and it's also a game about relationships, except these ones are family relationships. That's the pitch. Seems good to me. It It looks like it's got great art. It's got this that same wonderful art style. There is a heavier combat focus than there ever was in Spirit Far, but that's because it's a different kind of game and not as cozy. Um,
they're ramping up almost toward that. Like it feels like they're learning from Greece to uh
Yeah.
Um Spirit Fair to
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um so uh that's a big deal.
Oh, wait. No, wait. Am I
Greece is uh Nava,
which was also Nava was also How dare you make me feel my own feelings? Weep uncontrollably. Um but uh Ad Fates End looks really good. Looks really solid for that. Um, the my favorite like little twist is that your skill tree is also your family tree because it's a game about family. And I think like that that really like that sort of blending of two very different ideas into one

idea to like really help tell the story with all of the mechanics the way that Spirit Farer does is top tier and I'm really looking forward to it. Uh, and I will absolutely be playing at Fate's End when it comes out.
Nice. Cool. Uh, next up, Oniim Musha Way of the Sword.
God, it's like, and this will be a shorter one, too, but I was so glad that it still looked and felt like an onimusha game. Look, I love Souls likes. I love them. Nom nom nom. Eat them up. Want them in my belly. I did not want this to, especially for a game that is about killing demons and getting souls. Like I did not want this to feel like a FromSoft sort of ripoff. And it feels like this is a I I don't want to say casual because you could always ramp up the difficulty, but like a a narrative driven like uh sort of like nonopenworld like experience that you go through with

levels and you just kind of go through and do the thing. And I really really liked it. It felt like it's exactly what I wanted it to feel like. It it it it's slow and meandering and you go and there's like a little bit of puzzle things that kind of feel like what if Resident Evil but not tank controls and then you go in and have like sharp combat uh type controls and a cool boss that has a different slight mechanic to it. It's not changing the world, but I'm glad to see it's on the track of the kind of game I want it to be.
Yes.
Like this feels like for me it'll be a oneanddone game. Like I'll probably play it once and not play it ever again, but like it's been 20 something years since the last mush or like a long time.
Sure.
Um and I know people were saying uh what's it called? Might be different with a different with the not without the same camera like with like the lockoff.
I think personally I and I won't speak for you or anybody else. I think lockoff

camera is effective. However, I remember even back in the day for every time I was like, "Whoa, this looks cool." I was also probably frustrated by that camera more than I thought it was cool.
Yeah.
Um I could be alone in that and that's totally fine. So, I'm I'm okay with the differing camera. Uh it does feel not locked off at all, but it feels kind of floaty in the space. Uh I think you can take control of it. I'd have to go back and watch again. But like I never It's interesting that the camera didn't come into my equation when I was watching it. Maybe that's just due to modern games being so in the forefront of my memory. But I don't know. Um I'm psyched for it. Can't wait to talk to my gauntlet um and eat all the souls to do different. I also like that there's different color souls that do different things. I don't know. I just I dig it.
Cool. Excellent. Awesome. I love how we're going from like big budget remakes of classic things to

complete indie trash. Love this. All right. Death by Scrolling is by Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island fame and it is a roglike RPG where the scrolling of the screen is a metaphor for purgatory and you are pursued by death. Proceed. That's it. That's the whole pitch. I think that's all I need to say. It's weird. It's going to be a weird rogike game where it does weird stuff with game mechanics that make it feel like the kind of story that it's supposed to be telling. And that's all I really want. Uh I I also want to point out at this juncture that I have a small difference from Matt. Matt tends to go really in deep on trailers for games that like he's really interested in like the Onouch one. It's
a movie boy in me.
Yeah, it's a movie boy.
I make it far enough into these where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna play this game and then I stop watching because I don't

want to see anymore because I don't a I don't have enough time to watch all of these in their entirety and b um I want some amount of surprises, right? Like I don't want to see what all the items and relics and enemies do in Death by Scrolling. I want to know what the pitch is and be persuaded by the pitch." Now, it also helps that the games that I'm generally after are in a different price bracket than Oni Musha, right? Yeah,
Musha will probably be a $60 title. And Death by Scrolling, I can't imagine being more than 20. So, that is a thing that I am acutely aware of, but I'm super excited for Death by Scrolling just because I think this idea looks dope.
Yeah.
Yep.
I'm I'm excited about this one, too. I We It's funny. I Will and I do have different proclivities, but it's also nice and we'll pick certain ones, I think, cuz so we wouldn't have overlap and all that jazz. This game does look like fire and it's the kind of thing that I could see chewing up a lot of hours. Like
absolutely. Uh next up, I just a little a little a little thing,
dude.
Just And I'm I'm sure you're totally normal about this, right?

I'm totally normal about this,
right? Okay, great.
Uh the last of the uh Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection uh games were announced uh to great fanfare and great disappointment. Uh, I'm not going to bore you with all of these, but again, if you're not familiar with this game, it is ports of all of many of these games across different titles. So, like Mortal Kombat 2, you'll have the arcade, the Super Nintendo, and the Genesis. Uh, I think even the 32X depending like there's a bunch of different versions of of most of these, but the two that they added here were MK Mythology Subzero, which is a sidescrolling game, and Mortal Kombat Special Forces, which is like a 3D actiony beat him up. Like, it feels a little like Power Stone, but like worse. Um, it I I love this. Th This is something that is like I I'm I'm going to be the the trash boy that downloads this day one on PlayStation and then buys the physical copy on Switch because it's supposed to be on the cartridge. Um, I want to

support this kind of archival. Not only is this is going to be all these different titles, but there is Atari's done this in the past with digital I think it's digital extremes. I can't not digital stream. Um digital eclipse. Um there is an interactive history mode in this collection that lets you go through timelines and watch different things and play things and do things while you learn the history of this 30-year-old franchise. And I think that's phenomenal. There's also a section that looked super cool in one of the trailers where it's uh you can look at a character and it will flip through the character select screen from all of the games involved and you can learn about their story as you do that as the games progress.
So cool.
It's it's it's like a library. And I was watching an interview at Gamescom with one of the developers. They they're doing things like this also so that other companies can come or companies or products like cuz collecting all that's

really hard for a series. They're doing it in a way that is like freely accessible so like other things will be able to pull from it like this history of it like a knowledge base. They did it with a couple Atari games in an Atari collection and they're using their expertise in that to like put this together. The other thing that I am so people I'll say I'm a little disappointed but it doesn't really matter. Uh there's a version of Mortal Kombat 4 that came out on the Dreamcast called Mortal Kombat Gold and it had six uh playable other characters including like Katana and a couple other fan favorites and it's awesome but also it ran way worse than the arcade of Mortal Kombat 4 did. I'm I wonder why it's not here but I know a lot of people are like angry that it's not here in the community. I I think there's more than enough here to chew on. I'm curious if the history portion will like talk about why they didn't do that. Maybe there's something with Sega. Who knows?
Yeah.
The crown jewel and then I promise we can move on.
The crown jewel is Ultimate Mortal

Kombat 3 Waveet Edition. Everybody in chat, do we have any idea why that is?
It's been like lost of time, right? So, WaveNet Edition is was a was a series of cabinets in Chicago and San Francisco that basically was a fully rebalanced and updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. That also was the only time uh up to that point that Noob Sabbot was actually playable, but it was hyper limited release. And what it did was it it basically it waveet is a a type of uh fighting game pro is it protocol? I I'm I'm butchering this part, but like a way to play fighting games online. Yes.
They were basically T1 connected arcade cabinets in Chicago and San Francisco before this was a widely experienced thing and you got to actually play with people over the internet at arcade cabinets. This was something that specifically has never been released on

a console and has never been done like because you just why would you? And it was something that like because it was so limited, no one even knew if they still had the code for this thing anymore. It's awesome. Like it is it is so cool that that is here. And it makes sense because they're they're using WaveNet, I believe, to go back and put multiplayer compatibility across all the fighting games. Of obviously, Mythologies and Special Forces I don't think is going to have that, but also it has rewind mechanics. And if I remember Mortal uh Mythology Subzero, the platforming in that game is [ __ ] So, I'm going to be using that a lot. Uh needless to say, this will be a day one thing that I stream here. Uh Will, you're more than welcome to come along for the ride. I want to go through the chronology and the versions and like really dial in.
This is I I am I I'm beaming about this. This is where I This is my Final Fantasy 14.

Yeah.
Yep.
We may now move on.
Excellent. chat, when I tell you that I was awoken like a sleeper cell, when I was watching trailers and heard the opening of Battlestar Galactica from the show, which was, "I'm going to need all of you to hold on to your bones. I'm going to need you to hold on to your bones." Battlestar Galactica is 20 years old.
It was out when I was in college. I remember this because I had to go to a friend's room because they had access to a better internet connection so I could stream it because all the dorms didn't have the same internet connection. My college was crappy about that for a while, right? Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. I was awoken like a sleeper cell by the the serenade of the Battlestar Galactica uh theme song and I am here for this. Uh, Scattered Hope is

a fleet management FTL style rogike. So, they just smacked me with like all of the right words. They just went like, "Here are the words." And I went, "Great. So, say we all."
Yeah.
Right. And so, that I'm just here for this. I think it's great. Um, Battlestar hasn't been super culturally relevant for a while. Um, I do really like it as an idea. Um, and I'm I'm kind of excited to see it get get brought back. Um, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. Sorry. The reboot. Yeah. The the reboot is 20. That's correct. The OG is like the 80s7s 80s.
I have not I've seen a lot of it, but I'm not like a a super super fan. Just I don't know why. Nothing wrong with it. I think it's very very good. Battle Star is also is that the reboot when like the woman in the red dress six? Is that this series?
Okay. So, funny silly battle star story. I had a holiday party and I had some friends over and my friend Sammy was there with her husband Joe and my friend

Anthony was there and we were all in a circle and talking and Anthony was recounting Comic- Con had just or was he was recounting his time at Comic- Con that year in New York and he's like, "Oh man, I love Comic-Con. It's so good." D that and the other thing. And Sam's like, "Oh, we've only been once." Like, it was a lot of fun. And uh and he Anthony was talking about how his daughter's first cosplay was this year and D and he's like, "I love seeing the cosplay." He goes, "There was this one year where God the uh Six and who was the doctor's character's name?" My name.
Yeah. So, Six and Gas, right? Um he's like, "I ran into the dopest Six and Gas cosplay like I've ever seen. It was so just spot-on solid." And Sammy and Joe kind of froze for a second and they're like and they hold up their phone and before they'd met at my party, before they knew that they were friends, they both had pictures with one another at Comic-Con because Sammy and Joe were those cosplayers.
That's amazing.

And I was like, so that's my Battlestar, not Battlestar story, which I thought was very, very cool. I thought Battlestar was like um I like Battlestar for many of the same reasons that I like Babylon 5 in that it has an economy of storytelling that is very sharp, right? In both cases, you cannot it is not episodic. You cannot miss an episode. You will be very lost, right? Because it all matters. Uh and I really like that. Um, I I don't have anything wrong with like super episodic stuff like Farscape or Star Trek or Doctor Who, right? Those are all fine,
but Battle Star is your thing,
but but that sort of like space opera uh big complicated story thing is like really my jam. So, I'm I'm excited to see where they go with this. I'm excited to see it come out. Uh, I saw chat was mentioning there's a also a Star Trek Voyager one. I didn't see that one. Um
Oh, that might be more my jam to be honest. Yeah, it I'm sure it'll be cool

and interesting and wonderful. I didn't It did not make the the the It did not rise to the level of my notice among this sea of games.
God, it was so many
probably no fault of its own to be honest.
Yeah, we're going to be skipping around a little bit too. People were bringing up World of Warcraft. Um like the the sha shadows. Is that what it is?
Yeah.
Um
sure.
We could talk about a little bit at the end, but like that one didn't make my thing. In fact, I think I'm on my last one, am I not?
I believe you are. Your next one is Replaced.
Replaced. Didn't know this game existed. Uh that's my absolute favorite thing at uh midnight. Thank you. A darkness, shadow, whatever. Midnight. Uh but no. Uh Replaced is a 2.5D essentially cyberpunk thriller. It looks like what you remember pixel art games looking like but with way smoother animation and it seems as though like style is

just front and center on this entire thing. The combat seems like it rifts a little bit on the Batman like the Arkham games. Um and it just like it looks immaculate. I cannot do um I cannot do this game justice. Like I even the the screen caps of it don't watch the trailer or the interviews about Replaced. It looks so good. It's easily my favorite looking game of the entire show. Um I I I cannot get over that. Uh just that's all I'll say. Go check that out.
Okay. Uh I think you have one more after this before my last Oh, do I?
Uh yeah. Um
Oh, yeah. Cult of the Lamb is getting expansion. I Okay, I love the idea of Cult of the Lamb. I love everything about this IP except playing the game. The game didn't really vibe with me, but like I love that it exists and I love

the media that exists around it and I love how snarky it is and how on the nose it is and how they're just like, "Hey, there's this cute thing and also a demon." I love that. And them getting more stuff and bringing a bracket into prominence is really cool. Um, especially with all the lessons they've learned from the core game and the core game launch. Uh, I think this will be really great. More Cults of the Lamb is good. It's also one of Deolver's most successful IPs um, like ever. Uh, so I'm glad to see that they're keeping it kicking around and they're not just like, "Okay, cool. We're done with this." Um, especially because Cult of the Lamb feels a lot like a game that is pseudo live service and that it maintains some relevancy by playing it with Twitch chat. Uh, if you're unfamiliar, Cult of the Lamb has full Twitch chat integration where you can bring people from your chat into your little uh, religious commune thing. Uh, and sometimes they're naughty and you have to put them in the stocks and chat thinks that that's hilarious and all kinds of stuff. So, um, yeah, just more more cults of the Lamb looks

interesting. I'm excited for it.
Yeah. Uh, and the last thing on my list is not a game at all yet bis based from it. Uh the trailer for the second season of Fallout uh looks immaculate. I like that they are make they're tying the ghoul's history to um Mr. House. Uh if you have not watched the trailer and you are a person who is uh who likes watching trailers, I suggest you do it. Um I am so looking forward to moving the story into the New Vegas of it all. And uh it was very very cool to get to see it uh before it. I just I I started a rewatch on a 4K disc of the first season. I I want to reward companies that tend to keep their content behind walled gardens of streaming services when they do actually release a nice collection on a physical media. Um and it's been really really lovely. So, I'm looking forward to that as well.
Yep.
Justice for the New California Republic.
Uh did you want to do You should do your

uh honorable mentions. Oh, uh, my honorable mentions real quick. I, again, in the fighting game genre, I'm really interested in, uh, Invincible versus the Invincible World fighting game. I think that's really going to be good. Also, um, um, uh, the the other one, which I was confused about, but I like as anyway, I hope that it actually plays well, uh, was Indiana Jones: The Golden Circle on Switch, too.
Yeah,
I thought that was an interesting sort of, uh, trailer drop on it. We'll see how that goes, especially especially after the very poor reception Elden Ring. Yeah, Elden Ring uh was was shown on the Switch, too. It only really works in docked mode and it doesn't work well in docked mode. Probably take a skip unless they're going to do some But they showed this at Gamescom, so like it's pretty close to done. Maybe skip Elden Ring on the Switch, too. It doesn't
That sucks. Uh they like here's the thing. if they are smart, they will actually hold the release of it and fix

it. Um, this is not going to be like if they just released it as is and it was trash for a while, I don't think we're going to get like the essentially like the cyberpunk sort of long form fix for it. I think they'll just dump it and be done because the this is okay. This is me tinfoil hating. Nintendo already gave them the hype money. Yeah. They have a exclusive Soulsorn uhesque title on the Switch 2 coming and they got to dump Elden Ring on all of the trailers for the Switch 2. It's a real bad look if they don't make it good, but uh it's it's also I feel like not their major focus, which sucks. Like a great switch to port portable would be amazing and maybe they will do it but it worries like why not just not show it at Gamescom unless they were like actually contractually obligated to do so.

I don't know maybe they didn't maybe they wanted to see how poor the reception was to see how much they needed
how much they needed.
Yeah.
Um but yeah apparently it's stuff like if you move the camera too quickly in a Souls Light game everything frame chugs.
Yeah. Would you believe that moving the camera quickly is a big part of many if not all Souls like games?
So,
yeah. So, I don't know. I I want it to be good. Um I don't think I was going to ever pick it up because it's not on the cart.
Yep.
Um because just the same way that I like picking up games that are actually on the cart to vote with my dollars, I will also not pick up your game if it is not on a cart. And I will be the tiny wolf uh meme just howling at the moon and affecting no one.
Yep.
Okay.
So, I mean, will I think that basically covers all of Gamescom, right? Like there's no other there's no other game that really excited us or you in particular,
right? Nothing else that like shook up

the entire industry and is causing massive ripple effects in the launch windows of probably dozens at this point of games. Uh yeah, definitely nothing that Oh wait. Oh wait, dear friends, dear dear true believers, we waited seven years to wait 48 hours to wait three minutes for a twominute trailer that told us to wait two weeks and we're still hyped. So it is it is not a myth. It is in fact happening. It is in fact happening. Everybody feel free to not remain calm. Um Silkong has been confirmed to drop September 4th, 2025. This uh announcement was accompanied by a Jason Shrier article which I um which we uh he passed out a gift link to it.

It's on Bloomberg. Don't know if the gift link's still good on his socials, but uh the the gist of the article is it took seven years to make because they gave three extremely creative people virtually unlimited money and no firm timetable and they were having fun making a really big cool video game. And you know what? I'm so happy. I'm so happy. Uh this is great. I'm super excited. Um, it's going to be it. Everything I've seen uh leads me to believe it's very good. Now, the next obvious question is, uh, am I going to play it on the channel? Yes, absolutely. I am being nothing if not a benevolent and just streamer overlord. You will have until September 8th, that is the following Monday. I'm giving you an entire weekend to get ahead of me. And then following breakfast, I will uh embark on my journey of Shah.

Um,
will you be playing it off stream before stream?
I am being so good, Matt.
Whoa. What are you doing?
I'm being so good. I'm going to
Don't do that.
I want to like put my head in a hole and like not look at socials for 4 days. It'll be fine. Um,
yeah. So, um, so that happened. So, that was really cool. I was very glad to see that the the player base uh responded favorably. Um we did a we did a live stream along of the announcement stream in the Discord uh for all the patrons and subs and channel members. If you're any of those, you can join the
Oh, yeah. If you've gotten to this point in this in this video, in this show, hi. Hello. And also uh we do have a Patreon.
Yeah, we have a different way. Actually, uh, yeah, Patreon, Twitch, or YouTube memberships will all get you access to the Discord,
uh, where we do a bunch of stuff like that every now and then. And, uh, I I I popped in for that. It was fun to watch you guys all freaking out about it. Again, I love Hollow Night, but not like

not like Will loves Hollow Night.
Um, and so, uh, I think this trailer looks amazing. I am very pumped to play it. Um,
I just think it looks slick. like and I I'm super pumped that a small group of dedicated and passionate people that were having a blast got to actually make a video game, which should not sound so weird,
right? But it it sounds less weird when you realize that Hollow Knight has cracked 15 million copies sold. They they they revealed that, right? Normally the exact number of copies that a game has sold is kind of a nebulous thing that we're estimating based on a bunch of data because many companies don't want to reveal unless they're at like a major milestone and then they'll usually wait some to keep people guessing about how many exactly they've sold.
Did they release that recently?
It's it was in the Shrier article. Oh.
Um but they announced that they've sold 15 million copies total of Hollow Knight, which uh I believe the cheapest sale price ever for Hollow Knight is $5 million. So, if we take that to be their total take-home per copy,

wait, $5, you mean?
Yeah, $5. Excuse me. That'd be a That's a That's a steal,
right? Uh was $5. So, it would be $75 million total take-home after taxes and publisher shares and everything else divided three ways is enough money to make video games forever, even if you never release any of them. Uh so, you know, um
uh Desi, uh actually, I'll put this up again. I don't know if it actually will go up again. Go up again. Haha.
Out of the loop. Don't understand the hype behind this game.
Excellent. Let me let me let me uh help explain this by explaining another recent phenomena.
Hollow Knight, which we just spoke about, is the uh first game in this uh series, right? Hollow Knight is a muchbeloved Metroid Vania. Hornet seen here, is the protagonist of Silkong and also a side character in Hollow Knight one. Um she's a
where you play the titular Hollow Knight. Uh, no.
No,
I actually don't. It's a common misconception. Um, the hollow night.

Yeah. No, please. Here. Can you push up my glasses?
Yeah. Right. I'll just I'll just reach.
Wow. You did it.
Yeah. Good job. Okay. Um, Hollow Knight's actually the boss.
That's right.
The Hollow Knight. Uh, yeah. Is is actually one of the final bosses of Hollow Knight. um Hornet scene here will be the protagonist of two. Uh one of the reasons that Hollow Knight uh that Silkong is uh so um hyped is that uh the original Hollow Knight is clean, polished, smooth, and very much beloved. It takes a lot of the right cues of uh from uh Souls games and from other Metroid vanas and sort of polishes them. It does some innovation in some key places, but what it really does is it is a polished, lovingly created, original world with deep lore and interesting

characters and a ton of DLC that they released afterwards. So, um, just like Samus isn't a Metroid,
I can't argue. That's that's that's the most true thing that's been said on this show so far,
right? Um, so, uh, as a result of Silkong's announcement, a large number of people, including me, uh, have gone back to play the original Hollow Knight to get all of their lore and everything else up to date and to brush up their skills. Uh, meaning that, uh, as of time of recording, uh, Hollow Knight has hit its new all-time player high. Uh, its all-time peak is now 39,356. Again, that is for a single player game on Steam only because we don't have access to charts for all of the other places. Um, but it the line continues to go up. The trend line uh showed that it peaked last night. There are currently 32,000 people on a Monday morning playing Hollow Night. There are 32,71

people playing Hollow Night on Steam right now. And it's the middle of a day on a Monday. I cannot stress enough how beloved the original is and so uh they've been teasing Silkong for a long time and it was about seven years um total and now people are finally getting a chance to to play it and we're all really excited. Um I hope that answers fully why people are super hyped. I am not I'm not saying that I here here's what I hope. I I don't have a like it's not going to be a thing that innovates in every way on every part of Metroid Vanias. My belief is that it will be a similarly polished labor of love that shows the same care for characters, detailed writing, interesting world, cool boss fights, neat combat that Hollow Knight did. I'm not saying like it's it's my favorite. Not because it's um not because it's something flashy, but

because it is like the worry stone that you keep in your pocket and you just keep rubbing it until it's smooth. It's that as a game, right? It is. It is very lovingly made.
As a I would say a Hollow Knight novice, I've beaten the game, but not like completely beaten the game. And that was with chat and Will's help. Yeah.
Um
I even clocked the the play style of Hornet seems way floatier at least from the trailers and like and it's it good it's good that like even someone like me who cannot like who does not it was not studied frame data um can kind of see like oh well this will feel this will be a different feeling experience than Hollow Knight was to play. So, while the innovation might not be like, oh, it's the next generation of Metroid vanias or whatever, the the momentto- moment play will feel different, and that's something that I was excited for.
Yeah, absolutely. There are a bunch of key differences. Um, we've also I've also done like the trailer uh analysis,

and we've got a lot more options, abilities, things to look forward to from Hornet's kit than we did from the night. Um, but that's makes sense for a bunch of reasons that aren't pertinent here, but I will lure spout at some point. Yeah. Um, the last thing, by the way, about Silkong that we did want to mention is that, uh, if you thought you were excited for an indie game coming out in September, you were excited for them to come out in September, the amount of scrambling that is happening in the indie game space right now to get out of the way is huge because there is no room in indie game land for any other game to release that weekend. Now, unfortunately, this is sort of an unintended dev I don't think Team Cherry did this on purpose. I think this was kind of inevitable at this point. Um, Silkong is one of the most wishlisted games in all of Steam. I don't think I can fully convey how wise a move it is

for all of the indie devs who were going to release in proximity to Silkong to be like, "Nope, sorry. We're pushing it back. We're out. We're sucks." like
this is just a uh and I don't think Team Cherry wants this, but it's inevitable that this was going to happen. Now, they could have
made a much like longer form announcement way earlier when it was going to come out
that would have let people get out of the way.
Yep.
Um but also there's so many things going on behind the scenes, especially for a team of three people. Like they might I Who knows? I'll be curious as you know the months and years go on like we started to learn a little bit more about the development and what they want to share but like there's a world where like they weren't even sure it was going to come out in September and they finally said it was done and they want to get it out as soon as possible because they know people are waiting on it. So it's it's a it's a unfortunate knock-on effect of the popularity of this game that other other groups are going to have to well no one has to but if they're smart
they're moving out of the way.
Correct. Um, and it sucks because like

again this this is no one's fault. It is just that some teams might not be able to pivot and it was a surprise and that will take some chunks out. But again that's any that's any medium of art or or or entertainment you know.
Yeah absolutely.
Um and that dear friends I think is our show for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, I'm I'm actually surprised very few people asked why we weren't talking about Silk Song until the very end. And the reason is we didn't want to take all the oxygen out of the show by being like so right at the very beginning. Um,
it's a debate whether or not the thumbnail for this will just be this image with kept you waiting. Uhhuh. Uh, because I think that's kind of fun though. It
top is at the bottom. But yeah,
was that
I said I think it needs to be in Well, it could be in the
do a whole bunch of different things, but my point is
we'll talk about it later. Yeah. Uh yeah, we knew it would be a big chunk.
Um Thunder Thunder knew. Um

I I ran this by some friends in a voice channel chat and uh Thunder was there.
Yeah.
Um
no, it's good. It it's uh this was a really good Gamescom. I enjoyed all of the all of the things. And again, it was too much to ingest. We probably missed a bunch. We didn't even scratch the surface of a couple different games in there. Yeah.
Um but uh that is to each their own.
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and we'll have even more stuff to talk about, not next week, but the week after when Matt is back fully from PAX West. So, Matt, go ye therefore and have an excellent PAX West. I'm sure everyone here uh is will be very interested to hear about the panels when you get back. Again, those are both on Sunday night, August 31st. one at 6:30 p.m. in Blue Dragon with the rest of the EC crew and one at 4 pm in the Firebird uh called Tears of the Kingdom where Matt's going to help with that Tears of the Kingdom tier list. That's two different spellings of this word. You can figure out which is which.
You got it. Um that dear friends will be all for us today on Breakfast. Thank you

all so much once again for being here. Do deeply appreciate it. That means that all that remains to us is for Matt to do the sign off that we always do together every week. Just the same as predictable as Silk Song not getting released until Oh, wait.
Well,
maybe not the best example.
No, it's the best example because just like Silkong, everything about the release date has been incredibly clear from the get-go. They wanted to foster a sense of community. They just they just decided to do it through constant constant it'll be done when it's done energy. We do the same thing here because the show is actually done and we won't do this communal sign off until the show is actually complete and therefore we can all come together and ensure that we as a community say goodbye and go into the week in a positive vibe that we can all just feel at the same time. So, without further ado, thank you so much for watching Games for Breakfast this week. And I

don't think there's anything left to say other than Finanada. [Applause] [Music]